Bogotá1 is a very unusual Latin American capital.
First, it is not a primate city; it does not dominate Colombia in
the way that Buenos Aires overshadows Argentina or Lima controls
Peru. Second, during the 1980s, Bogotá's population continued to
grow rapidly. Third, Bogotá suffered little from the economic
recession and debt crisis of the 1980s. Good national management
kept the level of external debt down, and the discovery of new
export resources, such as coal and petroleum, attracted foreign
capital to Colombia and helped to maintain a thoroughly
respectable rate of economic growth.2 Fourth,
Bogotá's economy does not seem to have suffered from the
government's policy since 1986 of opening up the national economy
to foreign competition. Even if Bogotá is not a major export
centre, it has lost few jobs because of trade liberalization; its
experience is very different from that of, say, Mexico City.
Finally, Bogotá is atypical of metropolitan Latin America in so
far as most bogotanos seem to have improved the quality of
their lives in recent decades. The numbers of people living in
poverty has declined relatively, the result of a buoyant national
economy and Bogotá's central role in Colombian economic life.

At the same time, Bogotá also suffers from many problems
similar to those faced in other Latin American cities. Providing
jobs for a rapidly expanding labour force is a critical issue,
even if the level of unemployment is currently very low. Although
personal incomes are not actually falling, far too many bogotanos
live in poverty. Malnutrition and poor health are rife and
too many families live in overcrowded conditions or in homes
lacking adequate services. Bogotá suffers badly from traffic
congestion, a situation aggravated by a poor public transport
system. Environmental problems are also serious and most forms of
pollution are getting worse.

Bogotá was founded by the Spanish in 1538. They chose a good
spot to found a city, in a rich agricultural area with plenty of
water and space in which to expand. Of course, its elevated
location far from the Caribbean and Pacific coasts, together with
the mountainous terrain of western Colombia, impeded efforts to
control the national territory. Bogotá long remained a primus
inter pares, never becoming a "primate" city (Gilbert,
1994; Jaramillo and Cuervo, 1987).

Bogotá has become a large city only in the last fifty years;
in 1938, it had only 300,000 or so inhabitants. It began to
expand rapidly when falling rural death rates and increasing
levels of rural violence, superimposed on an inequitable
distribution of land, encouraged cityward migration. With
economic growth creating jobs in Bogotá, migrants began to
arrive in large numbers. During the 1940s and 1950s, the city was
growing annually at over 5 per cent; in the 1960s and 1970s, at
almost 7 per cent (table 11.1). During the 1980s, the pace of
growth slowed, but, unlike most of metropolitan Latin America
(see chapter 2), the city continued to grow relatively quickly.

Migration was the key element in urban growth from the 1930s
until the late 1960s. Migrants arrived from all over Colombia,
but principally from the neighbouring departments of
Cundinamarca, Boyacá, and Tolima (Gilbert and Ward, 1986;
Castañeda, 1993). More women moved to the city than men: in
1951, Bogotá had 100 women to every 77 men in the 20-24 year age
group (Alcaldía Mayor de Bogotá and CCB, 1987: 49).3

In recent years, natural increase has contributed more to
Bogotá's growth than migration. In the first half of the 1970s,
migration generated approximately half of Bogotá's growth, but,
by the first half of the 1990s, only 22 per cent (Yepes and
Bosoni, 1993: 52).4 This change was not due to any slowing in the
number of migrants coming to the city: 74,000 arrived in 1992
compared to 57,000 in 1982. It was mainly a consequence of the
age structure of Bogotá: despite a rapid decline in age-specific
fertility rates, there were more young adults to bear children.

Table 11.1 Bogotá: Population growth

Year

Population (000s)

Annual growth (%)

Bogotá/next three
largest citiesb

1905

100

0.80

1918

144

2.8

0.76

1938

356

4.6

0.84

1951

715

5.5

0.65

1964

1,697a

6.9

0.74

1973

2,855a

7.6

0.89

1985

4,268a

3.4

0.96

1993c

6,498a

5.4

1.27

1993

5,898a

4.1

1.16

Sources: Gilbert, 1978; population censuses.

a. Including Soacha.
b. Medellín (including Bello, Envigado, and Itagüi), Cali
(including Yumbo), and Barranquilla (including Soledad).
c. The National Planning Department has decided that the
population of Bogotá was probably overestimated in the 1993
census and has reduced it by 600,000. The census results are
currently being recalculated. Both figures have been included in
the table.

Bogotá's population also expanded because life expectancy
rose significantly. In the early 1970s, the average Bogotáno
lived for 66 years, by the early 1990s for 71 years. Greater
longevity was helped by a spectacular fall in infant mortality,
from 50 per 1,000 live births in the first half of the 1970s to
23 in the the early 1990s.

Declining fertility and increased life expectancy has had a
marked effect on the city's age structure. The population under
15 fell from 42 per cent of the total in 1964 to 31 per cent in
1985 (table 11.2). While the relative decline in the number of
children has reduced demands on the education system, it has
increased the demand for jobs. If Bogotá's population is getting
older, there are stir] very few people over 60 years of age; that
is a difficulty to be faced in the future.

Table 11.2 Bogotá: Age structure, 1951-1995

Year

0-14 years

15-44 years

45-64 years

65+years

1951

34.8

52.3

10.5

2.4

1964

42.1

46.1

9.6

2.2

1973

38.5

49.4

9.7

2.4

1985

31.3

54.0

11.5

3.3

1995

30.1

65.9

4.1

Sources: Alcaldía Mayor de Bogotá and Cámara de Comercio de
Bogotá, 1987: 47; for 1995, Yepes and Bosoni, 1993: 53.

Bogotá has never managed to dominate the Colombian economy,
always fighting for supremacy against powerful regional rivals.
The history of industrial development in Colombia reflects this
rivalry clearly. At the turn of the century, Medellín was the
country's largest manufacturing centre. It still retained that
position in 1945, when it had one-third more industrial jobs than
Bogotá (table 11.3). It was only when import substitution became
national policy in the 1950s that Bogotá managed to overtake its
great rival. Thenceforth, the capital's larger market and its
privileged access to government and political decision-making
began to count in its favour (Gilbert, 1975). By 1958, Bogotá
had more manufacturing jobs than Medellín and its dominance
continued to increase over the years. Even so, Colombia's
industry is still highly regionalized (table 11.3).

In recent years, Colombia's economy has become more
centralized. Between 1960 and 1985, Bogotá increased its share
of the gross domestic product from 15 to 25 per cent. In 1993,
the head offices of 26 major banks were located in Bogotá,
compared with only five in other Colombian cities (Revista del
Banco de la República, June 1993).

Table 11.4 Bogotá's gross regional product, 1989

Sector

Percentage

Agriculture

0.3

Mining

0.2

Manufacturing

24.9

Electricity, gas, and water

0.9

Construction

4.2

Commerce

9.6

Transport and communications

10.2

Banks, insurance, and
productive services

12.8

Rents

12.3

Personal services

10.2

Government services

15.1

Domestic services

0.5

Total

101.2a

Source: DANE, 1992.
a. Does not sum to 100 per cent because imputed bank services and
taxes on imports have not been included.

In 1992, it provided work for 34 per cent of the country's
manufacturing employees; in 1988, 43 per cent of all students in
higher education were studying in Bogotá. In 1993, Bogotá's
population at last exceeded the sum of the populations of the
next three cities (table 11.1).

Manufacturing generates around one-quarter of Bogotá's gross
urban product (table 11.4). The city has fewer manufacturing
workers per capita than Medellín but a better balanced
industrial sector. Its strength lies in the printing, metals,
transport, chemicals, and plastics sectors (ANDI, 1994). Most
production is for the domestic market; manufacturing in Bogotá
has never generated much in the way of industrial exports.

Government is a vital component in the Bogotá economy,
contributing 15 per cent of the gross domestic product in 1989.
Some 34,000 government employees worked in the city in 1987,
almost one-third of the national total (Lopez, 1990: 37).
Financial services constitute the city's third most important
generator of value added and, along with construction,
constituted one of the most dynamic elements in Bogotá's growth
during the 1980s.

Bogotá's economic future is uncertain but hardly problematic.
The city's economy was built, of course, during a period when the
trade regime was highly protective. Since 1986, the government
has been gradually opening up the national economy, a process
that was accelerated in 1990 (DNP, 1991). The question is whether
Bogotá can cope with freer trade and with newly competitive
labour and financial markets. As the head of the Chamber of
Commerce recently put it: "Bogotá, the capital of
protectionism, now has to overcome various difficulties if it
wants to become the capital of the opening" (Fernández de
Soto, 1994: 44).

The major worry for Bogotá is that it currently generates
very little in the way of exports. In 1991, the city produced
only US$188 of exports per capita.5 To judge from the
sales of the city's 100 largest exporters in 1992, Bogotá's
major exports are flowers (41 per cent), emeralds (29 per cent),
agricultural products (12 per cent), leather goods (7 per cent),
and clothing (5 per cent) (Pineda et al., 1993). Bogotá clearly
has problems in exporting manufactures because of its location.
The only foreign market that can be reached easily by road is
that of Venezuela. Between 1990 and 1994, trade liberalization
trebled Colombia's trade with its neighbour but further expansion
will be hindered by the current plight of the Venezuelan economy.
Since most of Bogotá's exports go by air, its international
competitiveness is not helped by the limited size of its airport;
El Dorado desperately needs a second runway.

Of course, optimism about Bogotá's economic future is greatly
helped by the healthy state of the Colombian economy. During the
early 1990s, apertura led to the repatriation of large sums of
Colombian capital, and the discovery of new mineral resources is
attracting large amounts of foreign investment. Bogotá's
strengths in producer services, higher education, research, and
commerce mean that it is bound to benefit from any growth in the
national economy. Reforms are needed if the city is to maintain
its current pace of economic growth, but it hardly faces an
insurmountable challenge.

Where Bogotá does face a serious problem is in providing work
for its rapidly growing labour force. The working-age population
grew from 2.4 million in 1976 to 4.8 million in 1995 and the
economically active population more than doubled from 1.2 million
to 3.0 million. The latter grew so quickly because of a
substantial rise in the labour participation rate (table 11.5).
Labour participation rates rose across all age groups with the
gross participation rate (economically active population as a
proportion of working-age population) rising from 51 per cent in
1976 to 62 per cent in 1993 (DANE, 1991). But the really
significant change was among women. Their participation rate rose
from 36 per cent in 1976 to 50 per cent in 1995 compared with a
relatively small rise in the male rate, from 69 to 77 per cent
(Gómez and Perez, n.d.: 11). In 1995, women made up 42 per cent
of Bogotá's work force.

Despite such rapid growth, the quality of the labour force
improved. In 1976, only 14 per cent of the labour force had
received any university education; fifteen years later the
proportion had risen to 22 per cent. The proportion of workers
with only primary-school education fell from 47 per cent of the
total to 29 per cent during the same period.

Unemployment, which has never been as severe as in Medellín
or in the major Caribbean cities, actually fell during the 1990s.6
In 1995, 7.0 per cent were out of work compared with an average
of 11.5 per cent during the 1980s.7 The reason why
unemployment has remained low is that increasing numbers of
workers have been employed in poorly remunerated work. Much of
this work is in the so-called informal sector, mainly
concentrated in commerce, construction, services, and
manufacturing; indeed, employment in the commerce and
construction sectors is dominated by informal workers (table
11.6). Between 1976 and 1990, the proportion of workers earning
less than twice the minimum salary rose from 50 to 58 per cent
(Gómez and Perez, n.d.: 81). Even if the number of domestic
servants decreased as a proportion of the Bogotá workforce from
10 per cent in 1976 to 5 per cent in 1991, signifying some
improvement in the employment situation, the so-called informal
sector was growing: it expanded from 48 per cent to 52 per cent
between 1990 and 1992 alone (ibid.: 161).

Table 11.6 Bogotá: Formal and informal employment by
sector, 1990

Sector

Informal workersa

Formal workers

Number

%

Number

%

Agriculture

10,678

1.3

15,144

1.7

Mining

1,382

0.2

10,317

1.1

Manufacturing

174,725

20.8

238,015

26.1

Electricity, gas, and water

232

0.0

7,428

0.8

Construction

70,140

8.3

47,721

5.2

Commerce

266,081

31.9

140,886

15.5

Transport and communications

49,036

5.8

58,392

6.4

Banks, insurance, and
productive services

30,916

3.7

130,606

14.3

Services

236,482

28.1

263,069

28.9

Total

841,672

100.0

911,578

100.0

Source: Gómez and Perez, n.d.: 160.

a. Informal-sector workers include those employed in domestic
service, family employment, self-employed who are neither
professionals nor technicians, and employees in companies with
less than 10 workers.

Over the last two or three decades, the quality of life in
Bogotá has undoubtedly improved. Life expectancy rose by five
years between the early 1970s and the early 1990s and the infant
mortality rate fell from 50 per thousand live births in 1971 to
22 in 1993 (Rinaudo et al., 1994: 28). The proportion of homes
built out of flimsy materials fell from 7 per cent in 1973 to 3
per cent in 1993. Per capita incomes have been rising, and
between 1971 and 1993 the city's gross domestic product rose at
an annual rate of 2.2 per cent. Poverty has also been falling,
with the proportion of Bogotános living in poverty declining
from 57 per cent in 1973 to 17 per cent in 1991, and of those
living in extreme need from 26 to 4 per cent (Londoño de la
Cuesta, 1992: 15).

Bogotá has much less poverty than most other Colombian
cities. In 198485, household expenditure showed that while 18 per
cent of Bogotános were living below the poverty line, the
equivalent figures for 13 other major cities ranged from a low of
22 per cent in Bucaramanga to 40 per cent in Montería (Muñoz,
1991: 286). Since 1980, most Bogotános have fared much better
than the inhabitants of Lima, Mexico City, or Rio de Janeiro.
Nevertheless, far too many people live in poverty. Some 800,000
people lack basic needs and 200,000 live in misery (Londoño de
la Cuesta, 1992: 15) M Bogotá is also a very unequal city; in
1985, the poorest quintile received only 4 per cent of the city's
income, the top docile 37 per cent (Lopez, 1990: 41). There is
little sign that the distribution of income has improved over
time. Escobar (n.d.) was unable to show whether the distribution
of income in the city had improved or deteriorated between 1985
and 1991, a disturbing finding in a city which has a higher level
of inequality than that found in the country's other major
cities.

Bogotá's physical area increased from 900 hectares in 1900 to
more than 30,000 hectares today (Gilbert, 1978; Pineda and
Jiménez, 1990). The pace of urban growth accelerated with the
development of motorized transport and particularly when private
car ownership exploded in the 1970s. Gradually, the urban area
spilled across Bogotá's administrative boundaries. In 1954, the
difficulty this posed for good management was resolved when six
municipalities - Bosa, Engativa, Fontibón, Suba, Usaquén, and
Usme - were absorbed into the Special District. Since then, the
city has again spread beyond its boundaries (figure 11.1). It
began to encroach into Soacha in the 1960s and is now absorbing
substantial parts of Cajicá, Chía, Cota, and Mosquera (Forero
et al., 1995).

The organization of space within the city has changed
markedly. Employment has become much more decentralized and many
professionals have moved their offices north from the traditional
city centre. Major newspapers, such as El Tiempo and El
Espectador, have moved their printing facilities to more
peripheral sites. As a result, employment in the central area has
been increasing much more slowly than in the city as a whole
(Pineda and Jiménez, 1990). New sub-centres have also emerged,
many located around shopping malls, such as Unicentro and
Búlevar Niza, others connected with office developments, such as
the National Administrative Centre

(CAN), new transport termini, such as the Terminal de Buses,
and new wholesale market centres, such as Corabastos. During the
past twenty or thirty years, the central area's dominance has
declined sharply.

The city's residential structure has also changed. In the
1930s, the rich lived in the north of the city and the poor in
the south (Amato, 1969). Figure 11.2 shows that today the social
geography of the city is less easy to describe. Two main factors
explain this shift (see chapter 4). First, high-income
residential areas have expanded outwards until they have reached
older lowincome areas. Second, the rising price of land has
forced the expanding middle class to occupy land in areas that
would earlier have been regarded as beyond the social pale.
During the 1970s, several large construction companies developed
middle-class suburbs on land in the west and southwest (Gilbert
and Ward, 1985: 116).

Mohan (1994: 93) claims that in the 1970s, "the spatial
separation of rich and poor appears to have increased ... The
spatial separation is more pronounced by radial sectors than by
distance from the city center, the norm in cities in developed
countries." Certainly there is little sign that the level of
segregation has declined since 1980. Recent changes have made no
difference to the huge social divide between barrios in Bogotá;
most suburbs are socially homogeneous and are clearly
recognizable as the territory of a particular income group. Vast
tracts of land are occupied by low-income groups while other
areas have few poor people. In 1985, for example, the Ciudad
Bolívar district had 29 per cent of its population living in
miserable housing conditions and 41 per cent living in
overcrowded shelter; by contrast, Chapinero, Antonio Nariño, and
Teusaquillo had very few families living in such conditions
(Molina et al., 1993: 45).